IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/222248.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Community building on crowdwork platforms: Autonomy and control of online workers?

Author

Listed:
  • Gerber, Christine

Abstract

Crowdwork is commonly described as an extremely isolating and anonymous form of work. Contrary to this, the article examines platforms’ managerial strategies to engineer so-called crowd communities. The results show that platforms assume either more controlled or lose strategies, which results in lower or higher crowdworker interaction, respectively. None of the communication spaces, however, seem to enhance labour power. While to some extent breaking the sociotechnical isolation of the crowd, the article suggests that crowd interaction serves to scale and outsource managerial tasks to the online workers in a highly rationalized work regime. Where it arises the self-organization is largely a self-regulation and reflects crowdworkers’ efforts to cope with the work system. Overall, the findings suggest that platforms develop more diverse and complex managerial systems than often assumed.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerber, Christine, 2021. "Community building on crowdwork platforms: Autonomy and control of online workers?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 190-211.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:222248
    DOI: 10.1177/1024529420914472
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/222248/3/Full-text-article-Gerber-Community-building-on.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1024529420914472?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro Gandini, 2016. "The Reputation Economy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-56107-7.
    2. Alvesson, Mats & Karreman, Dan, 2004. "Interfaces of control. Technocratic and socio-ideological control in a global management consultancy firm," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 29(3-4), pages 423-444.
    3. Brown, Phillip & Lauder, Hugh & Ashton, David, 2011. "The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199731688.
    4. Chris Smith, 2006. "The double indeterminacy of labour power," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 20(2), pages 389-402, June.
    5. Christian Fieseler & Eliane Bucher & Christian Pieter Hoffmann, 2019. "Unfairness by Design? The Perceived Fairness of Digital Labor on Crowdworking Platforms," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(4), pages 987-1005, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valeria Pulignano & Glenn Morgan, 2023. "The ‘Grey Zone’ at the Interface of Work and Home: Theorizing Adaptations Required by Precarious Work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(1), pages 257-273, February.
    2. Zamani, Efpraxia D. & Spanaki, Konstantina, 2023. "Affective temporal experiences and new work modalities: The role of Information and Communication Technologies," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    3. Hannah Bensussan, 2023. "Understanding the paradox of control and freedom of consumption under digital capitalism with Stafford Beer's cybernetic theory," CEPN Working Papers hal-04050331, HAL.
    4. Rossmannek, Oliver & David, Natalie A. & Schramm-Klein, Hanna & van der Borgh, Michel, 2024. "Customer misbehavior and service providers’ risk perception in the sharing economy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gerber, Christine & Krzywdzinski, Martin, 2019. "Brave New Digital Work? New Forms of Performance Control in Crowdwork," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 121-143.
    2. Carlos Martin-Rios, 2016. "Innovative management control systems in knowledge work: a middle manager perspective," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 181-204, May.
    3. Ruthanne Huising, 2014. "The Erosion of Expert Control Through Censure Episodes," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(6), pages 1633-1661, December.
    4. Vijaya Murthy & Jim Rooney, 2018. "The Role of Management Accounting in Ancient India: Evidence from the Arthasastra," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 152(2), pages 323-341, October.
    5. Jennifer Sin Hung von Zumbusch & Lidija Lalicic, 2020. "The role of co-living spaces in digital nomads’ well-being," Information Technology & Tourism, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 439-453, September.
    6. Mariann Hardey, 2020. "Gender and Technology Culture: Points of Contact in Tech Cities," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 25(1), pages 101-118, March.
    7. Palash Kamruzzaman, 2017. "Understanding the Role of National Development Experts in Development Ethnography," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 35(1), pages 39-63, January.
    8. Niki Panteli & Andriana Rapti & Dora Scholarios, 2020. "‘If He Just Knew Who We Were’: Microworkers’ Emerging Bonds of Attachment in a Fragmented Employment Relationship," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(3), pages 476-494, June.
    9. Laurence Romani & Patrizia Zanoni & Lotte Holck, 2021. "Radicalizing diversity (research): Time to resume talking about class," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 8-23, January.
    10. Ben Khaled, Wafa & Gérard, Benoît & Farjaudon, Anne-Laure, 2022. "Analysis of the political and identity dynamics of a dominant mode of control: The case of business ethics control and its legalization," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    11. Elena Baglioni, 2018. "Labour control and the labour question in global production networks: exploitation and disciplining in Senegalese export horticulture," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 111-137.
    12. Wood, Alex & Lehdonvirta, Vili, 2021. "Antagonism beyond employment: how the ‘subordinated agency’ of labour platforms generates conflict in the remote gig economy," SocArXiv y943w, Center for Open Science.
    13. Daniyar T. Baitenizov & Igor N. Dubina & David F. J. Campbell & Elias G. Carayannis & Tolkyn A. Azatbek, 2019. "Freelance as a Creative Mode of Self-employment in a New Economy (a Literature Review)," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(1), pages 1-17, March.
    14. Rita Hordósy & Tom Clark, 2018. "‘It’s Scary and It’s Big, and There’s No Job Security’: Undergraduate Experiences of Career Planning and Stratification in an English Red Brick University," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(10), pages 1-20, September.
    15. Claudio Morrison & Devi Sacchetto & Richard Croucher, 2020. "Migration, Ethnicity and Solidarity: ‘Multinational Workers’ in the Former Soviet Union," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(4), pages 761-784, December.
    16. Louise Folkes, 2022. "Re-Imagining Social Mobility: The Role of Relationality, Social Class and Place in Qualitative Constructions of Mobility," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 27(1), pages 136-153, March.
    17. Brad Greenwood & Idris Adjerid & Corey M. Angst & Nathan L. Meikle, 2022. "How Unbecoming of You: Online Experiments Uncovering Gender Biases in Perceptions of Ridesharing Performance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 499-518, January.
    18. Hugo Figueiredo & Pedro Teixeira & Jill Rubery, 2013. "Unequal futures? Mass higher education and graduates' relative earnings in Portugal, 1995--2009," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(10), pages 991-997, July.
    19. Harvey, Geraint & Turnbull, Peter & Wintersberger, Daniel, 2021. "Has Labour Paid for the Liberalisation of European civil aviation?," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    20. Carlo Perrotta, 2018. "Digital Learning in the UK: Sociological Reflections on an Unequal Marketplace," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(10), pages 1-12, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:222248. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.